


Revenants

by Vagrant_Blvrd



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artificial Intelligence, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 18:17:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15646281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vagrant_Blvrd/pseuds/Vagrant_Blvrd
Summary: Ryan’s losing his goddamned mind.





	Revenants

**Author's Note:**

> [Because reasons.](https://vagrantblvrd.tumblr.com/post/176851711756/miss-ingno-replied-to-your-post-shower)

Ryan’s losing his goddamned mind.

There’s a firefight going on the other side of the wall and he’s arguing with a goddamned ghost in the machine, hysterical laughter caught in his throat, because he can hear it through his implants. Standard company issue if he hoped to work on sensitive projects, work his way up the ranks and earn himself a coveted position.

He’d done his best to disable them when he – _ha_ \- resigned. Stopgaps and half-measures as he didn’t have access to the proper tools anymore, no way to get his hands on them without compromising himself, the others, and now - 

Now it’s like a backdoor into his own head, cool presence rooting around in his head curiously. Cold, alien, _wrong_ , and no idea just how much so.

_I’m not saying you’re lying, but are you sure about that?_

“You’re dead,” Ryan says, cold, clinical. 

It has to be, because there’s no way - 

_I don’t_ feel _dead._

Well, it wouldn’t, is the thing.

“Yeah,” Ryan says, drawing the word out. “That’s kind of the thing about this.”

The kind of people behind things like this like to put a nice spin on things. Claim they’re innovators for the world of tomorrow, taking mankind places it’s never been before through the marvels of science. Blind everyone to the darker side of things, the ugly parts everyone likes to gloss over, pretend don’t exist.

They find people who are down on their luck, or outcasts and misfits in some other way. The ones society won’t really take note of when they go missing, and there are always so many of them it would be a crime not to take advantage of an opportunity like that, now wouldn’t it?

They take their squishy human brains and turn it into a fancy computer program. Do a little tweaking here and there – cut out all the things they don’t want muddying the waters and toss it all out. 

Memories, personalities, all of the unnecessary things that help make up a human mind because no one wants that kind of mess in their perfect little AIs.

Just slice it all out nice and neat, and they end up with a blank slate they can mold however they like. Throw in some basic protocols and whatever else to make sure nothing bad comes back on them and call it an AI.

Dumb it down and sell it to the public as virtual assistant and they eat it all up because it makes their lives so much more convenient, doesn’t it. 

True, there are corporations who go the legitimate route of hard work and determination. Spend years and billions of dollars creating an actual AI that’s based off of someone’s neural network scans as opposed to being flash cloned off a corpse, but they’re rare.

Aren’t lauded for advancements in artificial intelligence, inundated by sponsors and supporters and viewed as the darling of the AI sciences.

_Eugh, gross._

It’s found the files, then. 

Files detailing the shady dealings and other things involved in projects like this one, and it makes Ryan’s skin crawl because those files are only the beginning. There’s far worse buried in the database, locked behind the most advanced encryption available and not enough time to crack them now. 

“Look - “

The door opens and Michael pokes his head in, disheveled looking and eyes a little wild, which. 

Understandable, giving the sound of weapons-fire he can hear down the corridor. The burn high on his cheek from a graze, skin red and blistered.

“You got the files yet?”

Ryan glances at the screen and the rotating logo of the company he put so much of his life into in once upon a time, before he’d discovered what they were up to behind the scenes.

“There’s a complication.”

Michael’s eyes narrow as he shoulders his way inside.

“What _kind_ of complication?”

Ryan waves hand to the lab around them.

“Hello,” the AI says, voice coming through the hidden speakers, and it’s odd to hear that soft British accent outside of his head. “Nice to meet you?”

Michael frowns, eyes darting to the computer in front of Ryan before flicking up to meet Ryan’s.

“The fuck is going on?”

Ryan rubs a hand over his face and laughs, because where the hell does he even begin? The others don’t know about this. Don’t know what Chimera’s doing in their little labs locked away from prying eyes, the kind of company secrets that get people killed.

All they know is that Ryan promised them he’d find a way to expose them for other crimes that were well-known to the public. 

A greedy, soulless corporation that didn’t care what – who – it broke so long as it was profitable.

Colony worlds left stripped of resources, countless people abandoned. Entire communities decimated by disease because it wasn’t cost-effective to manufacture vaccines when the mortality rate was so high anyway. The list of atrocities goes on and on, culminating in this one, and Ryan had been blind to all of it for so long. 

He’d come here hoping to get his hands on Chimera’s files, not. Not _this_ , one of their AI left behind, hiding in their own systems until it had sensed Ryan poking around. Seen what he was doing and slipped past all the precautions and cobbled together countermeasures he’d reforged for his implants like they weren’t even there.

“It’s a long story,” he says, and starts gathering his equipment. Disconnects cables and stows it all away in his pack “And we don’t have time to go over it right now.”

Not with Jeremy and the others holding Chimera’s security at bay. A handful of people against an entire division of trained mercenaries masquerading as private security. 

Ryan turns to Michael, takes a deep breath and asks the question he’s been dreading asking one of them before now. Sure of what their answer will be, because they’re smart. Smarter than he ever was when he signed his soul away.

“Do you trust me?”

Michael’s eyes narrow.

“The fuck kind of question is that?” he demands, lip curling. “What is going on here, Ryan?”

Ryan turns the monitor towards Michael displaying the login screen for Chimera’s pet project.

He can feel the AI in his head, shining, glittering. (Coiled and waiting.) 

Desperate to escape its prison here where it’s been hiding for God only knows how long. Disguising itself with shattered bits of code, playing dumb. Passing itself off as something else for so long it had been stunned when it realized Ryan saw it for what it was. 

Struck before he’d known it, coiled around his implants and making changes he couldn’t quite understand. Entangling the two of them in order to make its escape, hitch a ride in his head, and God help them all if it was corrupted. Spiraling into insanity at an exponential rate and undetectable until it was too late.

“Chimera's AI development program," Ryan says, bile rising. “Project Phantom.”


End file.
